Conveyor systems having a number of individual carrying carts have been used for many years to carry and sort products such as shoes and apparel or other items such as mail. Conventional tilt tray sorters discharge their goods onto individual chutes located near each packer. Limitations that had previously plagued package-sorting conveyor systems were the lack of versatility and amount of floor space required by the systems, especially when sorting a variety of items on the same conveyor was desired. In particular, the conveyor systems were not well suited for transmission of differently packaged products having unique friction coefficients and weights since the pitch angles associated with each chute are specially designed to handle a specific product. However, many manufacturers are now sorting or want the option to sort packages together that were previously never mixed such as mixed sorts, including both shoes and apparel.
In addition, apparel in plastic packaging conforms to the shapes of most discharge chutes. With the increase in the use of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) packaging, this may result in “clinging” to the chute surfaces depending on the humidity in the distribution center, which changes between winter and summer. Also, boxes used for packages may be large enough to “bridge” curved secondary chutes and not have sufficient contact for proper discharge at all angles.
Thus, there remains a need for a new and improved package sorting conveyor system having a conveying track and an improved air-film lubricated entrance chute and/or secondary chute having segmented walls for receiving packages from the conveying track having a variety of weights and packaging materials.